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In this episode, Steli and Hiten share how they choose the people they surround themselves with. They discuss the difference between being a maker and a manager as it relates to either starting a company vs. scaling a company. Hiten considers himself a manager and has found that he works best with people who are makers. Steli likes to lead in his professional life, but considers himself more of a follower in his personal life. Tune in as Steli and Hiten explain the importance of self-awareness and self-acceptance when it comes to pursuing the right people who can complement you.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:07 – Today’s episode is about the strategies Hiten and Steli use to choose the people they surround themselves with

01:31 – Hiten says the people you surround yourself with depends on what kind of person you are, what you believe you need, and/or what you actually need

02:22 – Hiten’s co-founder Neil has his own mindset in that he can accomplish what he has set his mind to, but he does not like managing people

03:03 – Other people do not give Neil energy

03:18 – On the other hand, Hiten is motivated by having people around him

04:04 – Hiten gets energy by knowing that other people are involved in his work

04:40 – Steli has two switches: one where he is completely surrounded by people and one where he just wants to be alone

05:35 – Steli likes to surround himself with people who are fairly different from who himself—in a way that compliments him

06:55 – Steli’s friends are adventurous and he gets the benefit of being able to join the trips that his friends organize because he can’t do it himself

08:35 – Steli did not consciously choose his friends, but found that they represent the things that he wants to be

09:44 – On the professional side, Hiten says there few people who can get things done on their own

10:47 – Organizations that start from just one person grow into something big

11:38 – Single people that have been driven to manage a large group can only do it successfully because they found one person that can do it well

12:01 – The skill set needed to start something is different from the skillset needed to scale

12:52 – It is important to realize what you are good at

12:55 – In the case of Neil and Hiten, Neil does not want to manage people but Hiten wants to, so they complement each other

13:21 – It comes back to self-awareness and self-acceptance

14:02 – When you realize your weakness, you can find somebody who has that strength

15:24 – Most people’s strategies are random or based on similarities

16:15 – Hiten says to know whether you are a maker or a manager, you should ask yourself if you are naturally thinking about how you can help others around you to be better at their job

16:59 – If you are thinking that you want to do their job, you are a maker

17:48 – Steli says ask yourself to think of someone you want to spend your time with and how you can make time for that person

18:35 – End of today’s episode

3 Key Points:

It is important to find people who can complement your weaknesses and strengths.

Self-awareness is key to knowing who you are and with whom you want to surround yourself.

Make time for the people that give you energy and make you happy.

Steli Efti:

Hi everyone, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti:

And in today’s episode of “The Startup Chat ” we’re going to talk about how the two of us, the strategies we use to choose the people we surround ourselves with. So, if you’ve been a longtime listener of the Startup Chat , you know that both Hiten and I have talked about how we choose the people in our lives and how we build kind of our network and how we hand-picked our friends. And kind of the strategies that we use. Hiten, you have actually talked about this even a lot more than I have in terms of how people are the main driver of how you work on projects, how you motivate yourself, how you get into new fields. So, I felt like there could be a whole episode in there, in terms of how to choose your friends or how to choose the people you surround yourself with. How to think about the people that are in your life. So I wanted to explore that field a little bit more with you. Let’s talk about, you know, you’ve articulated this pretty well in the past a number of times, like how important people are in your life. What don’t you kick things off and share a little bit about kind of your thinking there and your experiences?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, I think this has, to me, it has a ton to do with what kind of person you are and what you, whether it’s what you believe you need or what you actually need, which are two separate things and we probably don’t need to get into that part. But, in my mind, like … I … Like I’ll give an example. So, one of my co-founders, Neil, he’s very good at like, independently coming up with his own idea and then basically going after it. Whether it’s like finding someone that can help him or just, like, he’s literally created several different blogs of his own to many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of visitors. He’s … probably the number one marketer on the planet just because of what he wants. And so he’s able to define these things and then go after them and do it in what I would call a very individualist pursuit. And that’s just the way his mind works. That’s the way his mindset is. What he is generally averse to or more challenged with, even though I think he could be great at it, is just where he hasn’t spent his time, is he doesn’t really enjoy managing people or hiring a ton of people and having to deal with whatever that looks like. In terms of management. Let’s just call it management. That’s never been something he enjoys doing. I’ve seen him do it, but I don’t think it’s something he enjoys by any bit. And there’s some extent of it that he has to do. In my case, so I guess for him, people don’t necessarily give him energy. Other people. I think he’s pretty neutral on it or maybe even slightly negative on it ’cause you know, it’s just not how he thinks. In my case, it’s much easier for me to be motivated because there’s somebody else around or other people doing things and that has a lot to do with I think, being more on the manager side and less on what many would call like a maker. Right? So if you up to Neil, he’s more of a maker, less of a manager. If you look at me, I definitely tend to be more of a manager, less of a maker. That being said, these days, a lot of days I’m making stuff, all day, whether it’s specs or emails or even this podcast is making, right? But I’m doing it with somebody else in 99% of the cases or because of somebody else or something like that. So I guess for me, I get a lot of energy by having and knowing that there are other people involved in what I’m doing. And it’s a very, again, I still put this as a very personal thing, right? I’m not sure how you are Sully but like for me, like knowing that there’s a team dependent on what we do together is much more motivating than me being dependent on myself to go get something done.

Steli Efti:

It’s super interesting. Yeah. I think that I’m much closer to you, although I’m kind of binary on this. I’ve told this, I think, before, that I kind of two switches. I either want to be enveloped by thousands of people right, on a stage, or I want to be completely alone. So, typically I design my life in a way where when I’m home I’m actually not that social. I don’t do a lot of dinners and coffees, I don’t do meet-ups, I don’t go to conferences typically. I just go to work and then go home to play with my kids and I’m not that social. But then when I travel and I do conferences and I do team retreats and I visit customers, I’m uber social. So, I kind of get burned out on both ends, but I like both extremes. I don’t really like the middle as much. But that’s how I’ve kind of designed my life and my days. When it comes to like the people that I choose, the thing that I’ve noticed, a pattern that I’ve noticed is that I love to surround myself with people that are fairly different than I am in ways that help me be more than I am on my own. So, this could go all the way from having co-founders that are very complementary skill sets and there’s not that much overlap of what we’re really good at and what we really enjoy. But we heavily enjoy each other and respect each other and value each other and want to spend time together, although we don’t have many complementary skills or we don’t like doing the same type of activity. It starts with that but it’s also in my personal life, a very heavy representation of my friends, in my personal life, are people that are particularly good or extreme in a way that I’m not. But I want that kind of element in my life so I’ll give you an example. You know, I’m very, I’m a good, to use your metaphor, you know the Batman and Robin metaphor, most interpersonal relationships somebody has to be like the main act and somebody is a supporter? I’m not a good Batman when it comes to like being adventurous, like I’m not going to come up with a plan of doing something crazy and adventurous for a group of people and then lead the charge, in my personal life. But I want to have more adventure in my personal life, I want to do crazy unique funny stupid stuff, I want to do new things. So I have all these friends that are very adventurous and will be organizing trips and just continuously have these new personal hobbies that are interesting. And they’ll be organizing groups and explorations and funny, you know, weekend trips and whatever else they’re doing. And by having them in my life and by being friends with them I get the benefit and I’m a very strong support of these things. So anybody wants to go on a crazy adventure, I’m always down to do it immediately and to support, but I’m not the one that initiates that, in my personal life. So, I need these people. I have people that are incredibly silly and funny and I want that in my life but I’m not the person that is necessarily silly and funny all the time. I’m a fairly serious guy. So, when I look at my circle of friends and the people that I spend most time with personally, many of them are different in ways that I want, different from me in ways that I want represented in my life. So I pick and choose these people because I know that their influence will make my life richer and more colorful and more enjoyable and will push me to growth. And I’ve noticed that pattern throughout my life but today, if you took stock of kind of my friends and family and my surrounding and my network and the people I spend a lot of time with, the people that are put in a position that allows them to influence me heavily, it’s always people that are very different from me in a way that I, in a way and in a element that I seek in my life. So I think without ever articulating that strategy consciously, I’ve never gone by like, oh, I’ve never written this down, I’ve never made a list, I’ve never made a circle and wrote down the names of the people, kind of the things, I’ve never been very analytical. But if you take stock of my network and the people in my life, I’ve noticed, holy shit, like there’s a very deliberal pattern of what type of people I have in my life and it always kind of matches the things that I want to grow into, the things I want to have in my life that I don’t have yet enough of, or that I myself am not, you know, enough to drive that, if that makes any sense.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like … It’s just really fascinating to see kind of how, you know, different people are and what really gets them motivated to get up and do something, right? Whether it’s personal or professional, like for me, generally in my personal life, I’m pretty similar. I have friends who are adventurous and stuff like that. I don’t necessarily go along with their adventures but I do love to hear about them. So, that’s usually my extent of it.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

You know? But I do understand what you’re saying. Yeah, this is really interesting because at least the way I think about, on the professional side and doing business, there are very few people that can get things done on their own. And for many many businesses, so there’s a bunch of different kinds of businesses. Let’s say there’s like software businesses where usually you’re going to have people that are either all engineers or there’s a hybrid of engineers and non-engineers. And that really makes a big difference as to what the company does and how they think about things. And then if you look at businesses that are not software, a lot of them are actually started by an individual person and a set of contractors. This is a lot of like info products online or you know, even solo printers which are basically the idea that you’re a solo entrepreneur. And one thing I’ve noticed is that, and this is what’s been interesting to me about this conversation too is that eventually these organizations, these businesses go beyond a single person or even the early set of people. And it becomes somebody’s responsibility, usually it’s one person, could be more, to essentially wrangle all the people, right? And make sure there’s some level of what old-school you would call management going on. Otherwise, things fall apart pretty fast. So I’ve noticed so many companies that are started by a single person, just to take that example. The single person started it, they could do a lot of stuff on their own and then when they are challenged to manage, they fail.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

And the only way those people get through it is by luck. And what I mean by that is they happen to find one person or another person that is actually really good at managing or good enough. And they take the brunt of the organization, even if that’s not their title, even if they’re not the COO or something. They end up being responsible for so many other human beings in that org. Because the person who started it, let’s say the founder, is no good at it. Because the skill set of starting something is a lot different. The skill set of starting something is a lot different in a lot of cases when you’re individual to being able to scale the organization. Especially if you really don’t really understand that you’re not a good manager.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

And you scale your business by at one point, at some point, just hiring more and more people. There are like hundred person organizations that I look at sometimes and I’m like, wow, the person who started it has no idea how terrible the job they’re doing managing this hundred person team. And it’s just that luck of that one person they found who can just run it, but the consciousness in that person about how good or great they are at managing that team is very low. Like they don’t realize it. So, I just wanted to point that out that like, it’s really about realizing what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. Like, Neil doesn’t want to manage a hundred people, like it’s not his thing, he wouldn’t want that-

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

…right? He’d want someone else to do it, right? In my case it’s like, I don’t want to do it on my own. I’d rather, give me a thousand people, give me ten thousand people, it’s okay. Like we’ll deal with that. That’s actually relatively easy, it doesn’t give me any anxiety compared to having to go do something all on my own.

Steli Efti:

Yeah, I think it all comes back to kind of self awareness and self acceptance. And then realizing that even if you’re somebody that likes to do everything on their own, do you truly understand that fact? And do you accept it? And if you do so, what are the consequences of it? Which is one of two things right, either you decide to always stay a solo … Solo printer or solo person that freelance or contractor, just always do your own thing, deliver the work and never try to do anything beyond that. Or, the other option is that you try to find somebody that like. The third option is you just get lucky, you don’t know what you’re doing. But the second real option I think here is that you realize who you are and who you aren’t and depending on your goals and the outcomes are that you’re trying to generate, you realize that you need to have a partner, you want to have a partner that loves what you hate and hates what you love so you make a good team, right? And I think most of us don’t really consciously think about how they chose their co-founders, how they chose their early team members, how they’re choosing their employees, but also even on the personal level, to push it back there, how they’re choosing their friends and the people they spend time with, right. For most people it’s much more of a random act and I don’t think that that’s necessarily a problem if the people that you’re surrounding yourself with, if they’re making your life better, if they’re pushing you forward, if they’re making you happier, if they’re making you more successful. Then it doesn’t matter if you’re conscious of it or not, you’re doing something right and you should do more of it. But if you feel like you’re lacking something in your life or you feel like a lot of people in your life are draining your energy and you know, when you spend time with them you’re exhausted afterwards and you’re feeling less and not like more, then it might make sense to actually take stock of the people and how you choose them, how you select the people that you’re surrounding yourself with. And try a different strategy and try to do something different. And most people actually, most people I would venture to say are surrounding themselves with, the strategy they use to pick the people in their lives are either random, kind of just based on proximity and random luck like whoever is available closest to me, or based on similarities. Like they’re looking for people that is similar as they can be in terms of this person has the same hobbies, the same interests, the same background, the same upbringing. So, they seem very familiar to me hence why I like them in that they like me so they’re creating these clusters that are very similar. And therefore, I think also limited in terms of how much wealth, how much diversity, how much growth, how much value they can bring to your life. I think, I don’t know, let’s wrap this episode up with some tips Hiten, what do you think?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, let’s do a, I can start. So if you’re looking to figure out for yourself, you know, whether you’re sort of more of a maker or a manager just in general as a human, it doesn’t even matter if you’re an engineer or not a engineer or anything. I don’t think that makes you a maker or a manager. You just want to think about … The tip that I would give is just thinking through, when there are other people around that you … Have a responsibility for, are you really interested in unblocking them or not? And what I mean by that is do you naturally go towards, “Okay, what can I do to help them do their job? What am I doing that’s holding them back?” Are you naturally thinking about those things or are you more thinking about “How could I just do their job for them?” And if you’re thinking about “How can I do their job for them?” Or “I can do the job better than them”, then it’s likely that you’re more on the maker side of the current moment. Or like if you’re really thinking about “How do I enable them? How do I empower them?”, just your natural inclination, you’re probably more on the manager side. It’s just something to think about it. I’m not saying that you can’t be both. I actually tend to have learned to be both. But it’s a simple way to think about where do you naturally gravitate towards – doing the work or helping someone else do the work?

Steli Efti:

I love it. It’s just a simple but beautiful way to kind of, assess where you are right now. And again, if you know where you are, it’s much easier for you to get to where you want to go and help others to get there. So love that, so my tip is a simple one so instead of telling you to take stock of your personal and work and get rid of the people that are evil or bad or whatever, energy-sucking, my tip is to do the opposite. Just ask yourself, who is a person that I wish I could spend more time with? Doesn’t matter if it’s in your company and team, doesn’t matter if it’s a friend or family member, just think of a human. I think we all have these people in our lives. Somebody that, for whatever reason, gives you so much energy, so much pleasure, so much joy. It’s somebody that you instantly gravitate to and you go, “I wish I had more time with this person. I wish I would spend more time with this person.” And then, ask yourself, how can I make more time this month to spend more time with that individual? So, pick a person that you wish you could spend more time with and come up with a game plan to make time for that person. We don’t make enough time for the right type of people in our lives. So that’s my tip for the episode today.

Hiten Shah:

Great.

Steli Efti:

Awesome. That’s it from us.

Hiten Shah:

Later.

Surround yourself with people who add joy to your life & push you to grow. - @steli

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Steli Efti is the co-founder and CEO of Close. He’s Silicon Valley’s most prominent sales hustler, a YC alumni, advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs and the author of The Ultimate Startup Guide To Outbound Sales.